Auburn last undefeated team in NIC-10 tennis

Monday

ROCKTON — Auburn’s road to its first NIC-10 boys tennis title runs through three-time defending conference champ Hononegah, but the Knights made that road look smooth Monday.

Auburn won 4-1 at Hononegah in a dual meet, losing only at No. 3 doubles in three sets. That not only left Auburn (9-0, 7-0 NIC-10) the only undefeated team in the conference, it gave the Knights a one-point lead over Hononegah (13-3, 8-1) before Friday and Saturday’s tourney, which also counts dual-meet wins.

“The score is a little misleading,” Auburn coach Tracy Palmer said. “The doubles matches could have gone either way, but my guys found a way to pull it out in the end.”

“I think Auburn is just a little bit better than us,” Hononegah coach Harrison Hearne said. “They are definitely better than us in singles, although both of our singles players fought hard. I thought maybe we had a shot in any one of the doubles, but thinking we were going to win all three of them was a stretch.”

Any hope of that ended when Wyatt Morris and Logan Lupeamanu won the last five games in a row to beat Hononegah’s Adam He and Spencer Kerch 6-2, 7-5 at No. 2 doubles..

“We just stayed aggressive," Morris said. "We got down in the second set, but then we stopped being so hesitant with our shots and started being aggressive.”

And Quinten Nevenhoven toned down his aggression, ever so slightly, at No. 1 singles. Parker Hearne, who has won three conference doubles titles and was 8-0 in conference singles coming in, hit only one winner all day in a 6-0, 6-1 loss to the NIC-10's biggest tennis star.

“When he gets on one of his rolls and he’s in his own little zone, it’s something fun to watch,” Palmer said. “It’s really special.”

“I’ve gotten a lot more consistent, a lot more patient,” Nevenhoven said. “I wasn’t trying to hit as hard as I normally do. I was still trying to attack, but I waited more for my opportunities instead of trying to make opportunities out of something that’s not there.”

Nevenhoven turned that slight reduction in power into more accuracy, hitting shots down both lines.

And he ran down every shot that Parker Hearne crunched back at him.

“He was not going to miss today,” Parker Hearne, the Hononegah coach’s son, said. “And he is going to run down shots. He made it really tough. I didn’t play that badly. He just played great. I couldn’t do much against him. It’s frustrating, but you start getting used to it after he runs down three or four good shots in a row in the same game.”

Chris Park remained undefeated in the conference at No. 2 singles with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Hononegah’s Thomas Ptacin and Will Snedegar and Glenn Dusing won at No. 1 doubles for Auburn, 6-4, 6-3 over Matthew Schindler and Cole Skadeland.

Aaron Leighty and Jason Dupont gave Hononegah its only point with a 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 win at No. 3 doubles over Jacob Kobyashi and Pranav Volety.